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By the way …

Hi there! Welcome to my blog. I am known by my pseudonym, Nasifriet, a concatenated word blend of the Malay or Indonesian word Nasi (rice) and the Flemish or Dutch word Friet (fries). I was born and raised in Sarawak a.k.a the Land of the Hornbills, which is one of the 13 states in Malaysia. I moved to Belgium in the autumn of 1995. My other half is a Belgian (Flemish) and I have 2 sons. I work fulltime by day and blog whenever I have the time, energy and inspiration. If you don’t see my posts published for ages, chances are I’m dog-tired after a hard day at work or I’m on holiday :-D. Unfortunately, most of the time, it’s the former . When I started this blog on 27th March 2010, I was clue-less about the genre of my blog. Let’s just say that the gist of my blog are the day-to-day stories I picked up at work, at home, on holiday, networking with friends and most of all, my reminiscence of my childhood days growing up in Kuching. Every single post on my blog, including my cooking adventure, has that special story to share and BY THE WAY… is my catch phrase I used in my post ;-)

If you like reading my posts – my personal stories – please leave your thought(s) in the comment box. Your comment will be personally attended to by yours truly ;-)

Cheers!

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The images and texts on this blog belong exclusively to the author, Nasifriet of
https://nasifriet.wordpress.com/, unless otherwise stated. All work on this blog cannot be used or reproduced without the prior consent of the author. Unfortunately, she has found several texts and ideas belonging to her reproduced on other blogs without her permission. The author requests for a pingback or link up to her blog in case of any reproduction, otherwise, it is an act of plagiarism. Give credit where credit is due

On 5th June 2013 the United Nations celebrated World Environment Day (WED). The company where I am attached with co-celebrated this year’s theme “Think. Eat. Save”.

Our Business Unit has – probably – the best representative in our company to present this year’s WED. My colleague is 100% vegan!

Quote –

The term vegan was coined by Donald Watson in 1944 when he co-founded the British Vegan Society. Vegan initially meant “non-dairy vegetarian”. In 1951 the society extended the definition of veganism to mean “the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals.”

Unquote –

My colleague was first a vegetarian in 2001 when she became a full-fledged vegan a few years later. Her choice was for both dietary and ethical reasons.

She presented the background and facts on PowerPoint, focusing on this year’s foodprint and GoGreen campaigns without reservation. It was an eye-opener for the rest of the “carnivores” in the meeting room that day. 😀

By the way, the main difference between a vegan and vegetarian diet is that vegans exclude any form of animal-related products, such as eggs and dairy products including (animal) milk, cheese, butter, ghee and yogurt.

While planet earth is struggling to provide earthlings with sufficient resources to sustain the burgeoning population, food production is either lost or wasted, rather unnecessarily.

My colleague gave an example of the high consumption and pressure on natural resources in livestock and meat productions. Did you know that approximately 16,000 litres of water goes into a cow’s food to make one hamburger or 13,000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of beef, while less than 2,000 litres of water is needed to produce 1 kg of wheat?

I did not know then, but now, I know…

A Vegan Lunch

In between the meeting, we paused for a 100% vegan lunch, complete with a Vegan burger!!

… and ended with a vegan dessert. These two cakes were specially baked by my colleague. There were absolutely no traces of animal products in the cakes! You figure it out…

Mock meats and fish

I remembered eating “mock meats and fish” at a vegetarian/ vegan restaurant many years ago when I was a young girl tagging along after my Dad and Mum. I remembered enjoying the “meat” and “fish” dishes, not knowing or even thought of asking what ingredients went in the “mock meats”. They were so tasty and meat-like. Period.

>>> Fast-forward…

I realisedseitan (or wheat gluten) is the “culprit” in making imitation meat. Honestly speaking, I love the texture, albeit it’s chewiness 😉

Vegan food is becoming increasingly available in our local supermarkets and restaurants. The commercially packed bio-time (organic) products are really popular in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Not so long ago, I bought a packet of seitan (gluten “meat”) and tofu (soybean curd) at Colruyt (a Belgian family owned retail corporation).

Think.Eat.Save.

The message rallied by my colleague was still fresh in my mind. Think before youeatand help saveour environment!

Well, I thought, what better way to start that in my own kitchen 😀

By the way, if you don’t already know, gluten has the highest protein concentration which is a staple of a vegan diet, and then comes tofu (from soya beans), nuts, other beans, lentils and seeds.

Believe you me, it was a tall order for me to toe the line, especially with my living with three carnivores! LOL!

Anyway, I was glad I came up with this wholesome and healthy dish of Sweet & Sour Tofu and Seitan !

Ingredients –

250 g packet organic Tofu (rinsed briefly and cubed)

200 g packet organic Seitan (cubed)

5 cm piece fresh ginger (peeled and julienned)

5 stalks spring onions (washed and cut on the bias)

1 yellow bell pepper or capsicum (cut in strips)

1 red bell pepper or capsicum (cut in strips)

2 carrots (peeled, shaped in gear wheel and cut in rounds)

2 tomatoes (cut in chunky cubes)

1 onion (peeled and cut in strips)

3 cloves garlic (minced in coarse sea salt)

Sea salt and freshly milled black pepper, to taste

To make the Sweet & Sour Sauce (Note, I did not indicate any measurements – except for the water – as this is my recipe. Please feel free to adjust according to your taste. As a saying goes, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison”) –

500 ml water

Sesame oil

Soy sauce

Honey + Sugar, to taste

Salt and pepper, to taste

Tomato sauce

Vinegar

Rice wine (cooking wine) – optional

Cornflour

Method –

Take a large bowl and add all the ingredients for making the sweet and sour sauce. Stir and set aside. Pan fry the tofu, seitan, bell peppers or capsicums and carrots separately until lightly browned using only one wok or frying pan. Sauté the minced garlic and julienned ginger and add all the separately fried components back to the frying pan. Add the thinly sliced onion and spring onion. Stir fry for a minute or two, making sure that you do not over-cook the ingredients, and then pour the sweet and sour sauce, stirring lightly to combine, until the sauce thickened. At this stage, visual contact is important. If the sauce is too thick, add water, if too thin, add corn flour. Finally add the tomatoes and taste for final seasoning before plating up.

Sauteéd, lightly browned seitan

Next, the tofu

Julienned ginger

Seprately fried components ready for final stir fry…

Assembling the components together for the final stir fry

Add the onion strips

Add the sweet and sour mixture. Stir to combine until the sauce thickens.

Add the chunkily cut tomatoes and season to taste before plating up 😀

This dish is best served piping hot and fresh with steamed white rice and generous sprinkle of roasted peanuts and cashew nuts. The nuts gave the dish a different dimension with lots of flavours and textures. A healthy dish to die for 😉

Et voilà !

This was really YUMMY 😛

Oh by the way,my three guys were converted, albeit temporarily that weekend 😀

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Wow. Totally inspired me…Iv been a vegetarain no meat but fish yes for about a year already. So far no regrets and not missing any meat dishes at all. Tapi di sitok mok cari vegan products non diary is very hard mun ada it will be very expensive. Well mun kmk gu sia..che cook this dish for me ok. ♡

This looks awesome! I have a slight (very slight) soy allergy so I’m not sure I’d make this. But I love that you came up with a satisfying vegan dish. We eat vegetarian quite often, but haven’t gone to vegan yet.

What a pity. Soy is often used in vegetarian / vegan dishes. Have you tried Seitan (wheat gluten)? This is completely different from soy. It’s wheat flour dough being washed until all the starch is dissolved leaving an elastic mass of insoluble gluten. It’s chewy (but a nice chewy texture) and is so closed to “meat” texture, hence, is sometimes called “mock meat” 😀

I love vegetarian dishes, but can be really hard for me to prepare these at home all the time. My hubs and boys would always end up asking, “Is that all? Where’s the meat?” Ha ha ha…